I released a simple ASP.NET MVC website using Amazon service 2 days ago. I might call it MyFiller project version 1. In the 1st version, I actually have not finished all features which I wanted. So in past 2 days, I modified something on it. Now I can call it version 2.

In today’s Microsoft Build 2016 event, Microsoft’s Scott Gu just announced that Xamarin will be available in Visual Studio family WITHOUT extra cost, even in the free edition of Visual Studio Community and Visual Studio Code. Xamarin Studio for OS X will be free as a community edition.

Also, Microsoft announced the Xamarin is open source. it will be one project of Microsoft’s open source family .NET foundation.

If you recently research Windows 10 IoT with some hardware board such as Raspberry Pi, you should see the .FFU file, and you might realize you can not get enough information from Google search to know the .FFU file information.

Actually, .FFU file is more known by those Windows IoT developers, they download Windows 10 IoT Core package, and they will see .FFU file on the computer folder.

Microsoft’s Larry Lieberman recently in his blog wrote: “Today’s Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone. “

I think Microsoft should promise like this, otherwise they will lost lots of programmers. Current there are some situations let .NET programmers and Windows Phone programmers confused, they all have a question: whether they need to continue some Microsoft tech such as Silverlight and WPF since HTML5 has come, especially Windows 8 final version is also coming.

In Larry Lieberman’s old blog about “Windows 8 and the Windows Phone SDK”, he listed three main issues with running current Windows Phone SDK on Windows 8 Consumer Preview:

1: XNA Game Studio. On an attempt at installing the Windows Phone SDK, the user will receive error messages with regard to components of the XNA tool chain. These components will fail to install on Windows 8; the workaround for this has been blogged about by Aaron Stebner.

2: Windows Phone Emulator. Windows 8 cannot currently run the Windows Phone emulator, which will make it very difficult to debug your code. There are two issues in addition to the simple fact that the emulator does not run on Windows 8, having to do with specific emulator functionality.

3:.NET 3.5. Capability.exe and slsvcutil.exe will not run on Win 8 unless you separately install .NET 3.5.

However, “per the first point above”, Microsoft “will be enabling the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 on Windows 8 in the coming months.” (please read Larry Lieberman first blog about “Windows 8 and the Windows Phone SDK”)

In April 05, 2012, Larry Lieberman posted the 2nd article about “Windows 8 and the Windows Phone SDK”, the part 2.

In the new post, he gave some answers based on his 1st post.

1: Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update is now available and enables Windows Phone developers to do two things: “Develop apps that work well on the new 256 MB devices, Use the WPSDK 7.1 to develop on machines running Windows 8” (see here).

2: Today’s Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone;

3: About the long term future of Silverlight for Windows Phone: “Please don’t panic; XAML and C#/VB.NET development in Windows 8 can be viewed as a direct evolution from today’s Silverlight. All of your managed programming skills are transferrable to building applications for Windows 8, and in many cases, much of your code will be transferrable as well.”

Since many years ago we have used Microsoft Office software to handle our document works. We use Word to write general document, we use Excel to build spreadsheets, we use Power Point to write presentation files.

We knew if we need to use Microsoft Office software, we should have a legal Office software version and have to install it on our local computer. That means 2 parts: the one you should pay, the two you should install software which you might have to consider how the left hard driver size available .

Now the world tech turned to a new thing – the Cloud Service. Here we don’t want to talk too deep about Cloud, but you just know: at least you do not need to install the heavy Microsoft Office software on your computer if you use Cloud Service.

Let us start and let the thing simple, what we are talking about ?

OK, go to your hotmail or live email account. and check your top menu, you can see a “Office” menu:

(If you don’t want to open Office web apps through your hotmail or live mail, you can directly visit this address: http://office.live.com)

Click Office menu, and then you can see the following page, on the right side, you can see there are 4 icons which indicate Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Currently in the world wide range, Microsoft only provides these 4 apps for free which are the most popular office software.

You can try to click “Word” or “Excel” icon to go to a online Word document edit page or an Excel edit page, see below:

Word edit page:

Excel edit page:

You can see they are almost the same interface as your local Word and Excel. so you can use them just like you use your local office software.

Tip: You can not find the “Save” button or menu to save your document, because Microsoft said we do not save document by manually, all saving is automatic, you don’t need to be worry about you lose your document.

When you created some files, and return to main page, you can find more features as below showing such as you can Change permissions and share with other people:

By the way, Microsoft Office Web Apps are not only for computer browser , but also available for mobile phone.

Microsoft’s Bing Map control on Windows Phone 7 let people confused : There are multiple articles about them, but which one is the newest information ? Do the programmers need to install “Bing Maps Silverlight Control ” or not ?

Download the Windows Phone Developer Tools from App Hub. This download includes the Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.dll, which contains the API for the Bing Maps Silverlight Control for Windows Phone. You also need to install the Windows Phone Developer Tools October 2010 Update from the Microsoft Download Center.

It means If you installed Windows Phone Developer Tools, you get a API for Bing Map Silverlight Control for Windows Phone.

But the question is: Where is the Bing Map Silverlight Control for Windows Phone ? Before we only knew Bing Map Silverlight Control for Desktop, Are they the same ?

Especially note that the namespace names of the Bing Maps Silverlight Control for Windows Phone are different than the names of the desktop version of the control. The map control for Windows Phone has the following namespaces: Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps, Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.AutomationPeers, Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Core, Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Design, Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Overlays, and Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps.Platform.

So all information which we gotten by now indicates: Bing Map Silverlight Control for Windows Phone must be different than Bing Map Silverlight Control Desktop version. the desktop version normally downloaded from here: Bing Maps Silverlight Control SDK ;

But the question is still: Where is Bing Map Silverlight Control for Windows Phone ?

OK, actually, we have already gotten answer from above content: After you installed Windows Phone Developer Tools from App Hub, you have already installed Bing Map Silverlight Control for Windows Phone for your Visual Studio.

Go back to your Visual Studio 2010, check your ToolBox, you can see the Map control has already been there:

In Additional, Let us check the namespaces difference when you write your code: